who lays in wait for the fair maiden, and would rob and murder her but for the timely appearance of Sir Galahad de Montmorency. On his head was a hat built up in conical shape, till the diminishing peak reached a height of fully two feet. Round it were twined garlands of yellow marigolds, the Hindoo's sacred flower. Round his neck were half a dozen strings of beads of various sizes. His right hand was hidden in something like a sock, with the toes downward at right angles from his wrist. The counterpart of this I had seen offered for sale in the bazaar, and knew that it was designed to cover the hand with which he counted his beads. Some of these curious adjuncts to Church service are decorated with the semblance of a cow's head sewn on at the heel part. This holy man was content with a plain sock.

He sat crossed-legged on a bench, motionless, and apparently lifeless, save that as I stood a little distance off and made note of his dress, I could see his weaselly little eyes furtively glancing at me. He evidently thought I was sketching him, which pleased him, though there was higher satisfaction in the conviction that the episode would certainly not end without a transfer of coppers, perhaps even of silver. By the side of him upon the

bench was a trumpet and a sort of tambourine. Slipping the sock from off his hand, he took up the musical instruments, blew a tremendous blast from the trumpet, and vigorously rattled the tambourine. I was so pleased with this remarkable man that I am afraid I behaved with injudicious liberality, and the report of my munificence (it amounted to sixpence in sterling silver) being noised abroad, the two Brahmins, leaving a fresh influx of pilgrims in the well, ran after me clamouring for backsheesh.

This well is the centre of shrines and holy places. A stone's throw from my friend with the peaked hat and the cunning, greedy little eyes, is a marble slab, in the centre of which are two small dents. These, we learn, are the veritable imprint of Vishnu's feet when he alighted upon the earth. They are certainly very small.

In many of the temples the Brahmins are employed in rubbing oil into the heads and bodies of the devout. In one I saw seated an old man with a grand statuesque head patiently sitting whilst a muscular Brahmin worked the oil into his pate. Close by here, too, is a more than usually sacred growth of the peepul, a patriarchal tree, whose once stalwart limbs, drooping under the weight

of far-spreading boughs, were supported by a block of solid masonry built under them. Being Saturday, an ever-changing procession of grave elders, matronly women, young men, and maidens were walking round and round the tree, chanting a low strain. Every time they passed a particular point in its circumference, they threw on it with their hand water taken from the Ganges and carried in their lotas. Some varied the performance by throwing marigolds or grains of rice. It seemed a particularly dull game of follow-myleader; but it is a serious religious function, and good Hindoos would not see Saturday's sun go down till they had walked a hundred and eight times round the peepul tree, laved its trunk with holy water, or cast upon it some offering of food or flower.

A goat had discovered the richness of the land, and, climbing up the masonry, browsed upon the flowers; whilst the pigeons, coming down in swarms, pecked up the rice, nobody saying them nay.

Bathing was going forward briskly in the Ganges, and it was notable how men and women, coming up from their ablutions, shrank from the touch of the Christian. In the narrow byeways they flattened themselves against the wall and gathered in their skirts

as we passed by. If we had accidentally touched them, the spiritual benefits of their morning bath would have been forfeited, and they would have had to return to the Ganges and go through it all again.

We visited the Monkey Temple, which swarms with hideous bloated brutes, who have a most ungodlike hankering after a kind of sweetmeat sold at the gates of the temple. The temple itself is a poor place, with a shrine that might easily be turned to useful purposes by the slight alterations necessary to transform it into an "Early English" fireplace. The monkeys, when not grinning on the temple steps, or making long arms about the courtyard for stray beans or sweetmeats, or foraging among private dwellings which abut on the temple, live in stately palaces of tamarind trees, from the boughs of which they hang by the tail and jabber at their votaries. We saw the shrine before which a goat is sacrificed every morning, the blood-stained block and the flag on which it stood, testifying to the faithful performance that morning of the ceremonial.

But far more interesting was the observatory, built nearly two hundred years ago by the Rajah Jay Singh, by whose stupendous instruments Hindoo almanacks are to this day constructed. The observatory stands near the

Mân-Mandil ghât, on the banks of the Ganges, and is a striking object seen from the river. It is reached by many steps leading to a courtyard. The instruments, as they are called, give the place an appearance rather of a gymnasium than of an observatory. There is a wall 11 feet high and 9 feet 11 inches broad, set in the plane of the meridian. By this instrument able persons can ascertain the sun's altitude and zenith distance at noon, its greatest declination, and the latitude. Another wall, also set in the plane of the meridian, is 36 feet in length by 4 broad. It slopes upwards from a height of 16 feet 41 inches to 22 feet 3 inches. Following its lines the eye infallibly rests upon the north pole. This brick wall is useful for ascertaining the distance from the meridian, the declination of the sun or of any planet or star, and the right ascension of a star.

The most curious of the instruments, and the most colossal, is appropriately called Digansayantra. It consists of a pillar 4 feet 2 inches high and 3 feet 7 inches thick, surrounded at a distance of 7 feet 3 inches by a wall exactly its own height. This, again, is encircled by a wall double its height, and distant from it 3 feet 2 inches. The upper surfaces of both

walls are divided into 360 degrees, and are